Splitting funded hours between nursery settings

The Children and Young Peoples (Scotland) Act 2014 requires an education authority to have flexibility in the way in which early learning and childcare is made available and that it is flexible enough to give parents a choice when deciding how to access the service.

Parents and carers living in Aberdeenshire can request to split a child’s funding between two ELC providers. How this work will depend on your first choice of nursery setting.

Please note parents and carers need to check with both providers to see if they offer blended placements prior to applying.

Council nursery

If you are applying for a funded place in a council nursery, we will ask if you would like to split the funding. We recommend you discuss the need for a split placement with all your nursery settings first to make sure it is possible.

Once your application has been submitted, we will ask your main council nursery setting to contact you to confirm your requirements. They will then complete a split placement form for you. You will then be asked to confirm the details on the form, before sending it to the Early Years team.

Funded provider

If you would like to apply for a funded place at a funded provider, please confirm your place first with the provider where most of the hours will be spent. Once confirmed, use this as your first choice when making application and indicate that you would like to split the funding.

We will then ask this first choice funded provider to complete a split placement form for you. You will then be asked to confirm the details on the form and you will be expected to take the form to the remaining funded providers until they have all signed and confirmed their part in the form.

Once all funded providers have signed and confirmed, you will be expected to check that the total number of hours does not exceed the maximum 1140 allocation before sending the form to the Early Years team.